Oscar the Morning After

Marion Cotillard was “speechless,” she insisted, while hugging her Best Actress Oscar (La Vie en Rose) and giving thank you after thank you. I was even more speechless. The French star of a subtitled film about Edith Piaf (“I didn’t even know who Edith Piaf was,” one dumb-as-dirt radio commentator announced this morning) wins for Best Actress in a country that only four years ago was eating freedom fries? The world tilted on its axis. This year’s Oscars, from nominations through winners, was a series of surprises.

Well, by the end, Daniel Day-Lewis was odds on favorite for Best Actor. Even I predicted that (see I Hate Hollywood, Feb. 18). I hedged my bets on Best Picture and Best Director while giving No Country for OldMen and the Coen Bros. a good chance. What, you thought maybe Julian Schnabel would win? If the world tilts that far I’m getting off! This year the Academy broke with the illogic of recent award ceremonies by giving Oscar to the people who directed the Best Picture instead of splitting the honor.

For me, There Will Be Blood was the better film all around but I’m by no means incensed that No Country was the night’s big winner, taking away Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem). My worst concern is the number of bad imitations that may surface a year or two from now. How about John Malkovich in a blond fright wig as an enigmatic killer who dispatches his victims with a staple gun? That might seem pretty cool to audiences whose perspective is framed comfortably inside a cell phone camera.
The night’s other surprise? Cameron Diaz really can’t pronounce cinematography?

Caveat: this has little, if anything, to bear on your post, above.
As it goes, I read your pre-Oscar diatribe in the Crazy Shep about a week ago, & I have to say, however acquiescent you might have come across in discussing the Academy's (moreso the "mainstream" culture at large's) tilt toward "outre" film fare, below that patina of friendliness lay a jaundice, spiteful heart. I knew it when I saw the films, particularly those nominated for best picture, described as the type that, even ten years ago, one would have only been able to find at Milwaukee's art-house theatres (Oriental &/or Downer) & see reviewed in the Crazy Shep. That seemingly tossed off line was a shot across the bow of the "bourgeois mediocrity" of those who have the gall to live someplace where on-street parking is not myth & rents are not subject to how cool is the owner of the boutique adjacent an apt building. How dare people in New Berlin, Tosa... Stallis -- yay, verily, even Stallis, that hamfisting blue collar squalor -- know about "Moartea domnului Lazarescu", let alone see it. That... That was the Crazy Shep's place, ts giantist's shoulder from which to peer down at the peons in their Toyota Corollas & Plymouth Voyagers, as they drink their mass-produced Star*ucks grande mocha double chip "lattes" & listen to Avril. Now, though... Now, you, King Luhr, & your assorted fellow travellers at the only choice newspaper in Milwaukee, emanating from the posh East-side, have passed into obsolescence. Your niche -- (put-on) cosmopolitanism -- is not yours alone. You are done.
I drink your milkshake,
monty